British Airways Schedules More A380 Destinations

Coming just on the heels of British Airways resuming Airbus A380 service to LAX, according to theaeronetwork, the airline has announced the resumption of four A380 destinations in the U.S. that are slated to begin this coming spring and summer: Boston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Chicago. Dallas Ft. Worth is slated to receive the A380 as well but was already previously announced.

Neither Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport nor Boston Logan International Airport had seen a regularly scheduled A380 service since before the pandemic. The last time O’Hare saw any A380 service was from British Airways in the summer of 2019. Boston last saw a scheduled A380 service in January 2020 with Emirates operating to Dubai.

Emirates recently resumed A380 services to San Francisco and Washington D.C. Another airport that has recently been without the world’s largest passenger aircraft, Dallas hasn’t seen the A380 since Qantas served there before the pandemic.

While O’Hare hasn’t seen the A380 since 2019, Boston Logan did receive an unexpected visit from it on Nov. 13, when an Emirates A380 flying from Dubai to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was diverted to Boston due to weather in the New York City area. Service on the A380 is slated to resume on May 15, 2022, and will operate on a daily basis from London Heathrow.

Chicago will have the first scheduled A380 flight return on British Airways on June 1, 2022. San Francisco service on the A380 will begin on May 1, 2022, and Washington Dulles International Airport — located just outside the District in Northern Virginia — will begin on March 27, 2022.

Before resuming long-haul routes, the British superjumbo spent roughly a month — from Nov. 8 until Dec. 2 — doing short-haul routes within Europe to refamiliarize crews with the aircraft as it was grounded for such a long time. During that time period, the airline was operating flights from its main base of Heathrow Airport in London to Madrid and Frankfurt.

These announcements come on as the final Airbus A380 ever built is in the process of performing test flights before being delivered to Emirates. While airlines like Malaysia Airlines and Lufthansa have permanently retired their superjumbo fleets during the pandemic, from the look of these routes, it is clear that British Airways will have these aircraft around for a while.